Before The Storm
Andy
When I walked back into my friend Emily's church,
I saw the pretty girl right away. She'd smiled and said "hey" to me earlier when we were in the youth building, and I'd been looking for her ever since. Somebody'd pushed all the long church seats out of the way so kids could dance, and the girl was in the middle of the floor dancing fast with my friend Keith, who could dance cooler than anybody. I stared at the girl like nobody else was in the church, even when Emily came up to me and said, "Where were you? This is a lock-in. That means you stay right here all night." I saw that her eyebrows were shaped like pale check marks. That meant she was mad.
I pointed to the pretty girl. "Who's that?"
"How should I know?" Emily poked her glasses higher up her nose. "I don't know every single solitary person here."
The girl had on a floaty short skirt and she had long legs that flew over the floor when she danced. Her blond hair was in those cool things America-African people wear that I could never remember the name of. Lots of them all over her head in stripes.
I walked past some kids playing cards on the floor and straight over to the girl. I stopped fou ... read full excerpt from Before the Storm ebook
